세월호 참사에 대한 고은 시인의 영문시(Words without Borders 2014년 5월호 게재)

A Poem I Didn’t Name Now is a time of national mourning. Not for the death of a king we have never seen. Now is a time of national mourning during which we all should thrust our heads down  to the bottom of the sea where the flower-like lives,  the greening lives of children we still have in our eyes were all taken from them, murdered so absurdly. For goodness’s sake! For goodness’s sake! What a dreadful life it will be where we have to go on living with all those bright children, those healthy children gone on ahead of us. All through the last ten days, more than ten days, mothers have kept calling their children’s names, losing their minds, asking that they should still be alive, for mercy’s sake, come rising like Sim Cheong in a lotus bud, while fathers kept standing then sitting, crying out to the sea off Jindo. A floodtide of sorrow has risen  in every corner of this country, everyone feeling indignant, fists clenched. Not only anger, not only sorrow, but a mingled clot of black blood is rolling inside every breast. Did you say country?  What kind of country is this? We have realized just how vulnerable what we call humanity or what we call justice really is in a country like this. Number one in the world in such and such? It was outside number one in its suicide rate. Number ten in the world in such and such? It was beyond number ten in despair. Did you say society?  What kind of society is this? There is not one alley left anywhere  where people really live together. Did you say trust?  What trust do we have? The traces of the ancient friendship  in which we gladly trusted each other have disappeared from every sloping road. Often it’s said there’s nothing public, only privacy in this country. Not so. There is no privacy, either. Rightly founded privacy alone can bring forth what is public. Sacred privacy is all rotten now. Now is an age of death in which power is seized and wealth is gained  by such privacy. Again today they sit facing the southern sea. No matter how many times they beat on the ground with their hands all they have are bruised, bleeding palms. They will never come running, their faces bright. However, they still gaze out at the blank morning sea,  that was awake all night. How could it just be the parents alone? All the people, old and young, who are like the grass and trees of this country, have had their eyes fixed on the live news from the moment that overloaded hull began to tilt. We have spent days in lamentation, since the boat was submerged with only a tip of the keel left visible, watching as all the dishonesty and corruption of this country  and our lives were revealed one by one. Faced with a disaster that’s like a betrayal, like robbery, we have wondered if this country is truly a country. Faced with the victims these merciless, barbaric acts have made, we have wondered whether this society could ever have clean days. We have repented, asking how much each human being has been human for other human beings. We had to be ignorant, and also had to know, why there are words such as soul and conscience. My beloved child! My beloved child! My beloved child! Flowers! Greenings! Crying out thus, we should go plunging in, go back to zero, start again, from one, from two. You, I, and our country, everything, should try to make the very first step again. What has been paralyzed by greed for rapid growth, what has made us crazy by unlimited competition, what has become intoxicated by generations in power should be got rid of one by one, through and through, with the pain of writing on our bones and of having our flesh torn off. There should be glory for tens of thousands instead of banquets for just one or ten. We should not forget this incident, hammering a nail into it. It should not be something to be buried by this autumn or by next year’s spring. We should mourn it for a hundred years. We must summon up those dead flowers, those young greenings, the children of our bitter tears, against oblivion. But now, ah, this country is wealthy with crying and wailing. This country is wealthy with anger. My beloved child! My beloved child! Our beloved children!    © 2014 by Ko Un. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Sang-Wha. All rights reserved.   Ko Un Born in 1933 in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, Ko Un is Korea's foremost living writer. After immense suffering during the Korean War, he became a Buddhist monk. His first poems were published in 1958, then a few years later he returned to the world. He became a leading spokesman in the struggle for freedom and democracy during the 1970s and 1980s, in a struggle for which he was often arrested and imprisoned. He has published more than 120 volumes of poems, essays, and fiction. In recent years, selections from his work have been translated into at least fourteen languages, including 4 volumes so far published in English: The Sound of My Waves (Cornell EAS) and Beyond Self: Zen Poems (Parallax) were published in the 1990s, Little Pilgrim (Parallax) and Ten Thousand Lives (Green Integer) have been published in 2005. He has been invited to talk and give readings of his work at major poetry and literary festivals in many countries. » More by this author Translated from Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé and by Lee Sang-Wha Brother Anthony of Taizé was born in England in 1942 and has been living in Korea since 1980. He taught English literature at Sogang University, Seoul, for many years and is now an emeritus professor there, as well as a chair-professor at Dankook University. He has published more than thirty volumes of English translations of modern Korean poetry, including eight volumes by Ko Un. His Korean name is An Sonjae.